Editorial | How low can some in Congress go?

When we last left the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican-led majority was busy trying - and failing - to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. For the 37th time.

No matter that the nation needs jobs, the student loan crisis is unresolved, that the federal budget sequester is taking a big bite out of paychecks of thousands of furloughed federal workers or that bipartisan efforts to overhaul immigration are foundering amid partisan bickering.

Instead, House Republicans seem obsessed with revisiting failed efforts to limit the access of Americans to health care, and this week, as part of that effort, revived the GOP "war on women" that cost them so many women voters in the 2012 elections.

Tuesday, House Republicans rammed through an abortion bill to nowhere, better known as the "Pain Capable Unborn Protection Act," which would ban abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy. Except it won't.

Observers give the bill no chance in the Senate, controlled by Democrats. Also, it's clearly unconstitutional under the Supreme Court ruling that women have the right to an abortion until the age at which the fetus can live outside the womb, considered to be about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

But the bill gives Republicans something to crow about to their anti-abortion constituents despite growing evidence the public isn't exactly with them on this issue.

In fact, the public isn't with Congress on much of anything. A new Gallup poll just found Americans' confidence in Congress as an institution dropped to an all-time low, with only 10 percent expressing confidence in their senators and representatives in Washington.

Even newspapers and television news scored higher, with 23 percent of the public expressing confidence in them.

Some Republicans have figured this out, including Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of six House Republicans to vote against the bill that would ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

"I think it's a stupid idea to bring this up," said Rep. Dent, according to the New York Times. "The economy is on everyone's minds. We're seeing stagnant job numbers. Confidence in the institution, in government is eroding. And now we're going to have a debate on rape and abortion."

Yes, rape and incest are part of this bill. House Republicans grudgingly, at the last minute, included a provision exempting women pregnant through rape or incest but only if they had reported the crime.

How compassionate. Perhaps the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, simply is unaware that the majority of rapes - 54 percent, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network or RAINN - are unreported by victims, often for shame, fear of the rapist or fear they won't be believed.

Statistics are even harder to come by for incest victims - who often are children and by the nature of the crimes, victims of a relative, such as an older male with power over them. How likely is that such victims who become pregnant through incest have filed police reports? Not very likely, according to RAINN.

But ignoring statistics and other evidence is not unusual these days, particularly when it comes to the GOP. The House abortion bill passed this week followed some of the most surreal, pseudo-scientific claims since the so-called "Akin eruption."

Republican Rep. Dent made that reference to to Missouri Republican Todd Akin, who got clobbered in a U.S. Senate race last year after his infamous claim that women's bodies could block pregnancy in instances of "legitimate rape."

Yet Republicans don't seem to get the message. Rep. Franks, the abortion bill sponsor, offered this claim during a House Committee meeting with no supporting evidence whatsoever: "The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low."

He drew well-deserved ridicule for the comment. And House Republicans, apparently sensing danger, had Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, handle the bill on the House floor instead of Mr. Franks, who as the sponsor normally would have done so.

Still, things got worse during the debate on the House floor, much of it given to the medically disputed claim that the fetus at 22 weeks is capable of feeling pain.